N.C. Files Ethics Complaint Against DA Mike Nifong

Bump and Update: The North Carolina Bar has filed an ethics complaint against DA Mike Nifong for his improper extra-judicial comments in the Duke Lacrosse players alleged rape case. Professor KC Johnson has reviewed it and provides analysis.

The filing focuses solely on his procedurally improper public statements, which the Bar (correctly) contends violated Rule 3.8(f) of the Code of Professional Responsibility. That provision requires prosecutors to “refrain from making extrajudicial comments that have a substantial likelihood of heightening public condemnation of the accused.”

The North Carolina Attorney General's Office has received more than 400 complaints about Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong, according to an attorney general's representative.

From withholding exculapatory evidence to failing to properly investigate the case to the faulty photo identification procedure to his improper extra-judicial statements, I'd say this prosecutor is just about done.

And if you add all that to the problems with the accuser's credibility and her vastly different accounts of what happened, the case looks about done as well.

When I tracked down Robert Hal Brame aka "The Gentleman Bandit", the trail took me through Durham as he was using the name Richard Allen Crabtree, a friend who had passed away, but that Brame had grown up with in Durham.

I asked one detective there if I would have any problem coming down there to arrest Brame and, very sardonically, he said, "This is Durham. As you drive into town and hit the city limits you will see this gigantic billboard with a picture of a cop with a smoking gun in his hand. The caption below reads, 'We shoot to kill in Durham.', so, no, you won't have any problem here."

Very illuminating. (I actually busted Brame in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. He was doing burglaries and safecracking in Durham, stealing high end cars and running the loot to Fla, where his girlfriend at a Toyota Dealer obtained clean papers for the cars while Brame and his cohorts sold the stolen merchandise. 72 hours from start [when I got the file] to finish [with his arrest in Ft. Lauderdale], it was quite a ride.)

If you might know, or know of, Leonard Padilla in Sacramento, I hunted skips with him for years and personally returned more felons than I could ever possible remember to court or custody. A number that would be in the high hundreds or low thousands.

It was more exciting a life than I can describe - all stripped away from me by multiple cancers from good ole Agent Orange and its aftermath.